Aaronson’s book looks at a number of terrorism cases prosecuted across the country that involved using undercover informants. And how the FBI encouraged thousands of these informants to infiltrate Muslim communities, and plan terrorist attacks funded by the FBI.

In a conversation after his panel discussion, he said this strategy wouldn’t stop any lone individual from carrying out a destructive attack on their own. This is what appears to have happened in the Boston Marathon case. His book points out the flaws in our terror defense system, and it required time, commitment and detailed reporting.

Another theme of the conference that stood out to me is the issue of protecting sources. The panel discussions that touched on this subject did something I’ve never seen at a journalism conference, actually put sources themselves on the agenda and hear from them what it’s like to be on the other side. In this case, strong warnings were issued about how easy it is to reveal a source through electronic and telephone communication. The advice was to always meet in person with any source who needs strict anonymity.

In the final workshop, the “State of Investigative Journalism” focused on the need for collaboration among different entities. The idea is to augment distribution, which would get investigative pieces a wider audience and have more impact.

As part of a collaborative project myself, I found this discussion fascinating. Basically, collaboration is difficult, and everyone needs to come to the table recognizing what the other partners bring. And of course, perhaps the most difficult task is meeting the needs of each partner. The folks who seem to be the most committed to this are Frontline and Univision.

In terms of some practical advice to use immediately, ProPublica’s T. Christian Miller gave a short talk on “data scrapping.” It’s too complicated to get into here, and it’s not something reporters would be able to do. But it’s good to know that a web programmer could grab lots of great hidden information for any data-driven story.

Also, here’s some websites mentioned that all reporters could use:

FOIA Machine helps you organize and track your various state and federal public records requests: foiamachine.org

FOIA Machine: AboutFOIA Machine is an open source platform that empowers citizens and journalists to easily prepare, file and track multiple public record r…

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National Problems, Local Solutions.The Center for Public Interest Journalism was created in 2010 to support programming and projects intended to improve the quantity and quality of public interest news and information in the Greater Philadelphia area.

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